Weblog Entry - 09/27/2003: "Wesley on wealth #7"

09/27/2003 Entry: "Wesley on wealth #7"

The final installment from the series of extracts from the writing of John Wesley. This one comes from his sermon UPON OUR LORD'S SERMON ON THE MOUNT (VIII), taking the text Matt. 6:19-23. This is a bit longer than the others I've quoted - it's one of my favourite bits.

Therefore, "lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal." If you do, it is plain your eye is evil; it is not singly fixed on God.
With regard to most of the commandments of God, whether relating to the heart or life, the Heathens of Africa or America stand much on a level with those that are called Christians. The Christians observe them (a few only being excepted) very near as much as the Heathens. For instance: the generality of the natives of England, commonly called Christians, are as sober and as temperate as the generality of the heathens near the Cape of Good Hope. And so the Dutch or French Christians are as humble and as chaste as the Choctaw or Cherokee Indians. It is not easy to say, when we compare the bulk of the nations in Europe with those in America, whether the superiority lies on the one side or the other. At least the American has not much the advantage. But we cannot affirm this with regard to the command now before us. Here the heathen has far the pre-eminence. He desires and seeks nothing more than plain food to eat and plain raiment to put on. And he seeks this only from day to day. He reserves, he lays up nothing; unless it be as much corn at one season of the year as he will need before that season returns. This command, therefore, the heathens, though they know it not, do constantly and punctually observe. They "lay up for themselves no treasures upon earth;" no stores of purple or fine linen, of gold or silver, which either "moth or rust may corrupt", or "thieves break through and steal." But how do the Christians observe what they profess to receive as a command of the most high God? Not at all! Not in any degree; no more than if no such command had ever been given to man. Even the good Christians, as they are accounted by others as well as themselves, pay no manner of regard thereto. It might as well be still hid in its original Greek for any notice they take of it. In what Christian city do you find one man of five hundred who makes the least scruple of laying up just as much treasure as he can? -- of increasing his goods just as far as he is able? There are indeed those who would not do this unjustly; there are many who will neither rob nor steal; and some who will not defraud their neighbour; nay, who will not gain either by his ignorance or necessity. But this is quite another point. Even these do not scruple the thing, but the manner of it. They do not scruple the "laying up treasures upon earth," but the laying them up by dishonesty. They do not start at disobeying Christ, but at a breach of heathen morality. So that even these honest men do no more obey this command than a highwayman or a house-breaker. Nay, they never designed to obey it. From their youth up it never entered into their thoughts. They were bred up by their Christian parents, masters, and friends, without any instruction at all concerning it; unless it were this, -- to break it as soon and as much as they could, and to continue breaking it to their lives' end.
There is no one instance of spiritual infatuation in the world which is more amazing than this. Most of these very men read or hear the Bible read, -- many of them every Lord's day. They have read or heard these words an hundred times, and yet never suspect that they are themselves condemned thereby, any more than by those which forbid parents to offer up their sons or daughters unto Moloch. O that God would speak to these miserable self-deceivers with his own voice, his mighty voice! That they may at last awake out of the snare of the devil, and the scales may fall from their eyes!

I ran this series of quotations in response to something I read claiming Wesley as an advocate of capitalism. I hope that there has been sufficient material here to indicate that at the very least that claim needs significant qualification. John Wesley believed that his mission was the spread of scriptural holiness. His economic model was the Pentecostal community described in Acts chapter 2 and his economic goal was always the welfare of the poor. His view of private property was heavily modified from the conventional by a view of stewardship which prevents any talk of "my goods".

I have to make two admissions. Wesley's economic ethics were only proposed for the Christian church. This is not economic theory in any conventional sense. Secondly, it has to be admitted that Wesley failed in persuading the Methodist people to accept his economic model and he made his own contribution to that failure. Even so, I believe that wesley has an enduring and urgent relevance. Many Christians applaud capitalism because "it works" -- for them. Wesley would ask, "Does it work for others?" The system we live live, that has delivered our precious consumer goods to us so efficiently is believed by many to be the root cause of the death of millions of innocents to poverty and disease. At the very least, it has failed to address the plight of the poor with urgency. Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom as "good news to the poor". Can his Church claim as much?

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